Ad hoc communication networks comprise a number of nodes corresponding to one or more transmitter/receiver pairs. For any node, there will be some nearby nodes that are in range for direct communication, and these are commonly referred to as neighbor, or one-hop nodes. Other nodes will be out of range for direct communication and so may only be contacted indirectly with multiple hops via intermediate nodes. The ad hoc nature of the network means that, for any particular message, there may be many possible routes through different intermediate nodes that connect a source node with a destination node.
Mobile networks are inherently dynamic and ad-hoc. Continuous communications between mobile terminals in an ad-hoc network necessitates sharing of each terminal's state, link status, available bandwidth, and information traffic demands. As mobile networks increase in size the load on the network to support this maintenance or network situation awareness information sharing takes an ever increasing percentage of the total bandwidth.
Accordingly, systems and methods to support the distribution and employment of network situation awareness information for distributed scheduling of bandwidth in ad-hoc networks may find utility.